


Meet Me At The Manatee

by zilia



Series: Bar Fics [1]
Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Crack, Gerald - Freeform, M/M, Pinto Bar, cameos by bar beans!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3302018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zilia/pseuds/zilia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zach and Chris meet in an unfamiliar place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meet Me At The Manatee

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soproudofya](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soproudofya/gifts).



> This is a birthday gift for the lovely soproudofya. Happy birthday bb, hope you like it!
> 
> Warning: this is unlikely to make any sense to people who are not familiar with the Pinto Bar.

“Strange kinda place, this.”

Zach turned his head to look at the newcomer, recognising an attempt at a conversational opener, but choosing not to engage, irked that his solitude had been interrupted.

“Yeah, I guess,” he shrugged, before turning back to his chai.

“ _You guess?,”_ said the other guy, incredulously, “How many bars have _you_ been to that have a fully-grown manatee in the basement?”

The answer, of course, was none _,_ but something in the guy’s tone made Zach want to snark at him a bit.

“I’ve been to enough that have juvenile manatees in them to not be overwhelmed by the sight of an adult one,” he said in a deadpan voice, and he heard the other guy give a short bark of laughter.

“Yeah, ok, sure. Guess I asked for that one.” Instead of being repelled by Zach’s sarcasm however, as Zach had intended, the other guy seemed encouraged, and came closer; not quite at Zach’s table, but close enough for Zach to guess his intentions.

“Mind if I join you?”

Zach grunted.

“S’a free country.”

The other guy again failed to read his not-so-subtle “leave me alone” signal and dragged out a chair at Zach’s table, sitting down opposite him and putting down his cup of coffee and paper bag. When Zach failed to acknowledge him any further, he stuck his hand out under Zach’s nose, so that Zach really couldn’t ignore him unless he wanted to cross the border from “polite disinterest” into “outright rudeness.” He really didn’t have the balls for that, so he looked up, finally, and found himself the recipient of a bright blue gaze and a sunny smile that seemed to light up the whole room.

“Chris Pine,” said the other guy, and Zach put down the spoon he’d been idly toying with to shake his hand.

“Zach,” he offered, feeling the strength and warmth of Chris’s palm. “Do you always tell everyone your full name when you meet them?”

“Not everyone, no,” Chris said, still smiling. He held Zach’s hand for a moment, and his gaze for just a moment longer, and then he released it, and they both looked at the manatee for long minutes, saying nothing. The silence was less prickly than it had been now that they were introduced. The manatee wasn’t doing much, just blobbing around in his tank, but it was soothing to see the way he glided around. Strange that something so big could be so graceful.

“There’s a sign there that says his name is Gerald,” Chris said, gesturing to the manatee.

“Gerald.”

“Yeah.”

“Odd name for a manatee.”

“Why, what would you name a manatee if you had one?”

Zach thought for a moment. “Horatio.”

“Horatio.”

“Yes.”

“Is that any odder than naming one Gerald?”

“Horatio is a _classy_ name. Gerald’s an old-man name,” Zach informed him, cringing a little at how patronisingly that came out, but Chris held up a placating hand as if to concede defeat.

“All right, all right. Horatio it is.”

They were quiet for another few moments, watching Gerald-who-should-be-Horatio drift about, looking like an underwater sofa, or perhaps a massively overgrown aquatic marshmallow.

“Are you with the party upstairs?” Chris asked.

Zach hadn’t really paid much attention to the people upstairs after taking his drink from the woman wearing awesome gypsy-style clothing behind the bar.

“No. Are you?”

“No. I was just passing by and I wanted a coffee, and then when I realised there was a party I came downstairs. Didn’t want to interrupt. It looked like a birthday party, and I don’t like crashing parties, even for free cake.” He gestured down to the paper bag, which was untouched on the table. “I bought a cookie thing instead. Do you want some?”

Zach nodded, and Chris took the treat out of the bag and broke it in two. Zach took his half and nibbled it. Chris crammed his half into his mouth in one big bite and covered himself in crumbs, which he hastily brushed off himself onto the floor. Gerald fixed him with a grumpy look as he did so. Chris, unabashed, got to his feet.

“Do you want to go take a closer look?”

Zach found Chris’s enthusiasm infectious, so he rose too and followed Chris to stand by the manatee’s tank. The creature came to press his whiskery nose up against the glass, fixing them with a long, hard stare before blowing bubbles at them. If such things were possible, his gaze seemed to have softened, although it was hard to tell because his eyes were very small.

An odd, dreamy sort of feeling came over him, and when Zach looked down, he realised that his hand and Chris’s were intertwined, Chris’s long, warm fingers woven with his own, his thumb gently stroking the skin between his thumb and forefinger. It felt good. Peaceful. Like the swirling blue patterns reflected on the ceiling. He looked up, and saw Chris’s eyes were the same sparkling blue as the water in the manatee’s tank.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, and Chris laughed, delighted, and caught his lips in a soft kiss.

Zach devoted perhaps a quarter of a second to hoping that the manatee was going to give them some privacy, and then enthusiastically accepted Chris’s tongue into his mouth. They kissed for long, languid moments, and then broke off, breathless and panting. It was clear kissing wasn’t going to be enough when Zach somehow found his hands full of Chris’s ass and Chris’s hard cock pressing against his through their jeans.

“You wanna…?” he asked, not really sure how to finish the sentence, but knowing he wanted more of Chris.

“Yeah,” Chris gasped, “But maybe not in front of the manatee.”

“You think he’ll tell on us or something?”

“No, just…I’d prefer a little privacy.”

Zach thought for a moment, looking around the room for inspiration, but all he could see was the tank with the manatee in it, and that didn’t look like a sensible location for sexual shenanigans.

“Where could we go?”

As if in answer, the manatee gestured up with one of his flippers, towards the main room of the bar. Zach wracked his brains, and dimly remembered seeing a door on his way downstairs that might have led to a broom closet or something like it. Perhaps they could get some privacy there? He thought for a moment longer, and the manatee fixed him with an impatient expression, that seemed to say ‘go on, then.’

“OK, OK,” he said, nodding at the creature, and then he took Chris’s hand.

“I think there’s somewhere upstairs…let’s go look.”

Chris followed him eagerly, and, as Zach turned around for one last look at the manatee before leaving to the jumble of voices with all kinds of accents, he could have sworn it had given him a thumbs-up.

Except that was impossible, because manatees didn’t have opposable thumbs. And anyway, Zach had more important things to think about right now.

 

 

After they’d left the room, Gerald heaved a bubbly sigh. Humans. Their sexual practices were bizarre, and unhygienic. He shuddered, and made a mental note to tell Juno to place an order for some more lube.


End file.
